1. Field
The present invention is related to computer configuration, and more specifically to the sharing of information between virtual machines.
2. Description of the Related Art
A computer, as a physical computing machine, may be partitioned or multiplexed into a plurality of virtual computing machines, where each virtual computing machine runs its own operating system. One of the reasons for implementing a virtual computing machine configuration is to establish multiple isolated virtual machines on a single hardware platform. In order to maintain isolation amongst these virtual machines, there is typically no sharing of information or software resources between the virtual machines. However, since all virtual machines on a given physical platform must ultimately share the same hardware resources, such as processing and physical memory resources, there may be limits to how many virtual machines may accommodated on a single physical platform. Today's computing systems, such as server systems, may have requirements for implementing a virtual computing machine configuration with numbers of virtual computing machines beyond what is currently practical especially in terms of security software and associated processing duplication for each virtual machine. There exists a need for techniques that increase the number of virtual computing machines that may be accommodated on a single physical computing machine platform.